Edit: copy&paste mess... the first sentence should read: The practices described in the original article are crazy stupid

I never thought such practices that are described in the original article are crazy stupid. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for keeping brief and productive meetings, but the best recipe for doing that is to talk about stuff that matters, deal with real issues, and when it's all done, then it's done, don't keep people longer than necessary.

But tossing rubber chicken, medicine balls, making them run around, or going to some cold stairway - this all is just dumb and idiotic.

If you treat your people like stupid children who need punishment and control such as the above, then you simply are a very bad boss and a very bad manager and your work environment s*cks big time.

I'm just guessing you don't tell these things to the people applying to your jobs at interviews, since otherwise - hopefully - the more decent ones would just walk right out through the door. I would, and I will, if I would ever find myself in such situation. Thankfully, didn't happen up to now.

You would think though that the smaller market for each language

It seems you would be quite surprised how many Europeans speak and/or read a number of languages other than their own. Of course it's different for each (or at least some) countries, but overall, I'd say it's quite OK. Also, in most European countries I've been to there've been enough places to buy "foreign" language papers, zines, books, etc.

1) What language? [...]
2) What paradigm? Once you have decided on a programming language are you going to teach via an IDE? Text editor? How about[...]

For 1). I'd say it's very unrelevant, the point is to give outlook and possibility ot others as well. When I started learning coding at school when I was 11 (almost nobody had computers at home back then, my first was a c64, 2 years later), and we started with basic. Then, in high school they cycled us through 4 languages until we finished 4 years later (have to say, it was a math+CS class, and we had 4+4 hours theory and lab each week), but by our second year some of us geeks were already well ahead in coding knowledge -- and I think that was because our teachers were very good at the very beginning to make us interested.
My point is, I don't think the choice of language is such a big problem. The problem is when all they teach you is that language, and that needs to be avoided. Languages are just tools to bring your theoretical knowledge to life, they (it) shouldn't constrain you, but liberate instead.

As to 2). also, it's fairly unrelevant. Lots of us here didn't start with a fancy IDE or even a text editor :) If all you can say in favor of a language is that it has a fancy IDE, then you'd better drop it upfront anyway. Also, we already have anough newgen coders who can't work without an IDE. And that's not in their favor.

Well, never ask for numbers, you should know by now they always can come up with whatever numbers, and studies to "prove" those numbers as well.

As to your questions:
- All ( :) )

- Actually this would do more good to people than current TSA practices, since they might actually catch a lot of people with high blood pressure which they didn't know they had, so this might even be positive :))

At what point has South Park ridiculed atheists?

You should listen when people, who know, talk. The good old SP guys indeed ridicule religions whenever they get the occasion.

As to your question: Go God Go, Go God Go XII.

First, I assume the original post is mostly about the US, although it might be somewhat similar elswhere too. But, I'd say mos tof the problems come from fairly cheap "all-you-can-eat" packages in the US mobile world. There shouldn't be any limitless data package out there, but packages that allow for x, y and z data, then double or triple the price per mb or gb. All of a sudden you wouldn't have such issues. It's like with gas prices. Ypu can get the cheapest gas, yet still complain. Well, that's life pals.

I just want to add that if we're talking Kodak, I'd say digital cameras are only a very minor thing, a real tip of an iceberg. If you say Kodak, I first think of good film materials (they have such a long history for this, respect is the least they should get for it), film scanners and recorders, cinema film prcoessing hardware and labs, of the cineon format (they also had a full film processing chain called cineon system back in the days which was great), and so on and so forth. I'm really sad to see them fail so hard recently.

Network specialists? My a$$. They are no more network specialists than bloggers are professional journalists (yes, I feel your pain and anger and feel free to think yourselves to be anything you want, which won't change a thing).

If you want to be sure that the work is done right, try to do as much of the local installations yourselves as possible. Otherwise you're in for a treat: lot of wasted time plus paying for stuff you end up doing yourselves anyway.

And no disrespect, but calling an average of >50k for cable installing low... come on, be at least a bit realistic.

From my experience, the most important things a good manager needs to do are
- listen to everyone, and make (and I mean do make) the decisions, and not based on past friendships, but on the merits of the ideas,
- after the decisions, try to shield your team from everything that is above and/or beyond their work, they shouldn't know or care about administrative and or managerial stuff, you should do everything to provide a good working environment for them,
- to an extent, you have to forget you were a developer, don't try to solve everything and don't always try to come up with solutions and decisions before you listen to your team, because 1. after a while you're not qualified anymore to decide on every technical issue and 2. if you still do so, after a while nobody will even try to come up with ideas for solutions since they will see you don't listen and/or care, and you'll easily demotivate them.
There would be some more minor points, but I think the above are some of the more important ones.